A Study of Literary Trends in China Since the 1980s: The Revival of Classical and Modern Literature

By Teresa Chi-Ching Sun

This book intends to trace the revival of traditional literary works since the 1980s in China as it is revealed on the revitalized College Entrance Examination (CEE). In order to show how these changes reflect China’s altering ideology after the fall of Communism, selections from the CEE’s literary portion will be examined. Taking advantage of the resurrection of the powerful CEE, test creators have composed the literary portion as an education tool to shape public opinion in the post-Communist era. Literature in China have never been an independent art but had shared the responsibility for transmitting China’s intellectual and ethical traditions. The introduction of Communism to China silenced these traditions and made literature the servant of political ideology. This book traces the chronological process of restoring modern vernacular literature from the pre-Communist era and the ways in which traditional literature is being used for modern purposes. For many Chinese intellectuals, the gradual withdrawal of literature for serving political causes and the reinstatement of classical literature and early vernacular works to on the CEE bring to light the recovery of the aesthetic literary tradition and a return to normalcy. When students take the CEE, they not only mentally scrutinize literature that they first read during their secondary education, but also experience an assertive presentation of current Chinese cultural values and outlooks on life. This study argues that in the post-1980s CEE literary selections, students experience a variety of texts that summon up China’s pre-Communist literary tradition in order to serve as an intellectual guiding light for future social development. For those interested in comparative higher education, a particular area of interest may be the book’s singular consideration of the science and technology passages in connection with the restructuring of higher education in China as a remedy of China’s cultural tradition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RowmanLittlefield
• Release date: Mar 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9780761871095

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A Study of Literary Trends in

China Since the 1980s

A Study of Literary Trends in

China Since the 1980s

The Revival of Classical and

Modern Literature

Teresa Chi-Ching Sun

Hamilton Books

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Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgments

Sometimes it takes the most difficult conditions to allow one to endure even more strongly. The upheaval that China had experienced since the turn of nineteenth century did not mean that the Chinese had failed. The bitter taste from being insulted, humiliated, and struggling through a self-inflected calamity nourished generations of Chinese intellectuals to vow to rebuild a shattered China in the 1980s. I grew up knowing and admiring the many intellectuals in China and overseas whose spirit for consistently struggling for survival influenced and inspired me to seek a career in Chinese studies. Among them was my courageous mother, who never failed in any task in her life and endured enormous difficulties in caring for her family through the wars in China and her life in Taiwan. My husband, Terry, was always very supportive for almost sixty years of marriage. My children, Larry and Myra, bore with me during my struggle for a career.

Sometimes it takes the most urgent conditions to make one appreciate even more the willing helpers in one’s life. The sisters at Immaculate Heart College and Dr. Garth Sorenson at UCLA opened doors for me to pursue my study. My kind-hearted professor, Dr. Kenneth Ch’en, broadened my intellectual sphere with his teaching in Buddhism, and professors at Seton Hall patiently guided me to finish a doctoral degree. Without their help and encouragement, I could not walk down the rugged roads of academic life.

Sometimes it takes a willing mind to make one even more aware of the caring spirit of dear friends. I owe many friends my sincere thanks. Through the Palos Verdes community and my friends, I have come to know the true spirit of an American, broad-minded respect for freedom. In sweet memory of Dick and Joan Moe, Deedee Rechtin, and Janet Smith. Thank you to Lea Ann King, Janet Baszile, and most of all, my editor Molly Desjardins.

Introduction

The CEE as a Reflection of Changing Chinese Politics

As China is getting more and more active in the global community, issues occurring within China can no longer be viewed as a regional affair in Asia. They are now a global concern. To observe how China has been riding the tide of progress and facing the challenge of world competition is, then, in everyone’s best interest. If one is aware of the hundred years’ social turmoil, delayed development, and poverty China has experienced since the mid-nineteenth century, one would surely agree that China is now experiencing not only a taste of wealth, but a renaissance in its search for modernization in science and technology and in its economic progress.

If the broadening of intellectual horizons beyond the domination of the medieval church was the result of the Renaissance’s spirit of discovery in the West, then the passionate interest of Chinese people to restore their cultural consciousness by expanding learning evenly and openly from all civilizations after the 1980s was the result of China’s Renaissance—a self-unleashing from isolation. The collapse of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s resulted in China gradually opening its door to the outside world. It revealed that disrespect and a lack of trust among Chinese leaders almost shattered the nation. China’s awareness of the failure of dogmatic ideological conservatism in the form of Communism paved the way for absorbing different ways of thinking. As the country started to forge ahead with economic well-being and as leaders were exposed to social currents outside China, the social values and economic progress of the West shocked the Chinese and made them bewildered. How could Western societies be so successful in achieving prosperity and progress with alternate ideologies? Why had class struggle and planned economies resulted in nothing but poverty? How could the Chinese people be led out of their political utopia based on Communist ideology and toward what reformers promoted as a global view balanced by an open-minded mentality to all civilizations? The changing course of China’s political ideology from Communism to a Chinese characterized socialism thus was forming. This ideological transformation consists of many complicated aspects, such as judicial and economic change. But the most essential change was the social and cultural renaissance revealed by an essentially reversed shift in literary development.

From a cultural point of view, the political ideology that constituted Chinese characterized socialism included a regeneration of China’s cultural heritage, which was now being used as a base for a modernized sociopolitical system. Since China has been distinguished with its own civilized traditions for thousands of years undisturbed, it is only natural that a sensitive observer in the humanities and social sciences might notice that the shift in political ideology included a rejuvenation of moral and cultural values drawn from China’s own traditions. This intellectual direction was needed not only to replenish the vacuum of thirty years of Communist policy but also to guide the Chinese people to the original archetype of Chinese tradition that existed before Communism.

Different from most civilizations, China's moral spirit and cultural traditions are not embodied in one dominant religion or transmitted through monolithic religious institutions. Without a religious power, China has relied on its long literary tradition as intellectual guidelines throughout its history. The key to the longevity of its civilization, which sustained challenges from others, depended on the intellectual strength of philosophical and ethical thought, such as Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Political policies influenced by the philosophy and ethics of these traditions had, before Communism, always been reflected in the works of China’s literature. Further, Chinese literary scholars have always been attentive to sociopolitical concerns and influential in monitoring social reform. In fact, prior to Communism, public opinion was usually initiated and dominated by literary intellectuals. After the 1980s, the gradual altering of China’s thirty-year-long ideological pattern away from Communist labor class domination again granted space for literary intellectuals to participate in this new wave of reform.

To best see the changing and renovating trend of intellectual reform one must look to China’s educational system. Of the whole system, the screening of students from the secondary education to the higher education level is the most revealing. For the Chinese, to receive a higher education means more than just a chance to learn a profession—it is an opportunity to gain prestige and pride in self-reliance. The College Entrance Examination (CEE) has become a narrow gate to institutions of higher learning for high school graduates, and the general knowledge demanded from them is keenly presented in these examinations. The test takers take great pains to prepare for this examination, and the contents of the test have attracted intense attention and critical observation from the public.

The CEE is not an aptitude test, but an achievement test uniformly given to all students in China with changes in content each year. Since the late 1990s, the central government relaxed control and provincial-administered CEE exams increased from eleven to fourteen with other major changes in 2005.[1] Under central government guidelines, the three mandatory subject requirements became mathematics, Chinese language and literature, and a foreign language. The other six optional subjects are Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, and Political Education. Applicants typically will take the three mandatory subjects and select from the remaining optional subjects that match their intended college program (science/engineering or art/humanities).

The language and literature tests constitute a major portion of the CEE. Knowledge tested can be categorized into four groups: (a) language ability (vocabulary, punctuation, rhetoric, and sentence modification); (b) knowledge of literature (classic and modern); (c) interpretation of classical literature; and (d) reading comprehension of literary materials from a variety of topics selected from foreign literature, biology, physics, or archeology. The first two categories (a and b) often require less analytical attention than the latter two (c and d). Interpretation, punctuation of classical literary passages into modern language, and multiple-choice questions on literary knowledge are usually the test methods the CEE uses in the language and literature portion.

The suppression of educational pursuits during the Cultural Revolution suffocated the intellectual tradition of China. During this time the CEE was suspended. The revolt